


I Should Concentrate

by whereismygarden



Series: Ceremonials [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-23
Updated: 2013-04-01
Packaged: 2017-12-06 04:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic is (loosely) based on the song "Only If For a Night," so I'd give it a listen.</p>
<p>"And I heard your voice, as clear as day, and you told me I should concentrate."</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. The Grass Was So Green

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is (loosely) based on the song "Only If For a Night," so I'd give it a listen.
> 
> "And I heard your voice, as clear as day, and you told me I should concentrate."

Belle lost track of the days gradually. One day she found herself confused, unable to decide between forty-three and forty-four days. Her faint gouges in the wall came up to forty-four, but had she marked today yet? Having no windows made it hard to figure when the days began and ended. Maybe she had marked one day twice? The wall was rough as it was—had she counted natural cracks and seams as well as the shallow lines she made, as best as she could, with her nails?

                She paced at first, because she had never been the type of person to sit still. Going from long walks on rough roads every day to a few square meters of cell made her itch to move. No matter how she tried, how she varied her steps and stride and gait, after a few hours she was dizzy, and the number of steps from wall to wall, from corner to corner, was running through her mind in an endless loop.

                Lying still was worse. Then her thoughts turned on her and she fretted endlessly about her father, about Philip and Mulan, about the odd dwarf Dreamy, about everyone she had met on her travels. Most of all, she fretted about Rumpelstiltskin, who was most able to fend for himself out of all her subjects of concern. She had told the queen she would never stop fighting for him, and the woman had laughed at her. She wasn’t fighting now—she had lost, and she was lying on the ground, cold, unable to muster up an appetite except, she guessed, every few days.

                When she thought she would lose her mind from the solitude, she sang. Children’s rhymes, ballads of heroes, love songs, dances, dirges. For duets, she sang both parts, pitching her voice high and low. She sang every song she knew. When she ran out, she made up songs, until her voice was hoarse and the stone walls of her cell echoed until her ears hurt. Then silence returned and she was back to pacing, or more often—she thought it was more often—lying down.

                Once, drifting in and out of sleep, she thought she heard boots scuffling on the stone floor, but when she sat up and looked, her cell was empty, as always. Grey walls and floor, and the heavy wooden door. It happened twice again—over the next few days or a few hours, she wasn’t sure—and Belle was afraid she really was going out of her mind. She got up, unsteadily, and hammered on the door with her palms.

                “Regina! _Regina!_ I know you’re listening! Let me out!” She slammed her hands onto the door again. “ _Please!_ ” She didn’t even have the energy to be disgusted by the desperate, pleading note in her voice. There was no response, just the stinging in her hands and a slight trickle of blood sliding down one palm. She sank back down and curled into a ball, finally giving herself over to sobbing.

                She didn’t eat for a while after that, and she wasn’t surprised or worried the next time she heard footsteps. Slowly, she turned her head toward the sound and saw her former master standing at the other wall, playing cat’s cradle with a piece of gold thread. He wasn’t angry or scared, as he had been the last time she’d seen him. He seemed almost relaxed, his eyes narrowed in study.

                “Are you here for me, dearie?” he asked, his high voice half-amused.

                “Yes,” Belle rasped, struggling to sit up. She should be half-delirious from happiness and anger, but she felt strange, partially numbed.

                “I told you I don’t love you,” he reminded, daring to smile, the cruel smile of the Dark One. She smiled back, faintly.

                “It’s all right,” she whispered. “You came.” He crouched in front of her, tilted his head. The walls of her cell melted away in a shimmery fog. She felt light-headed, as though breathing bad air, yet grass stretched out around her, and she was cold with dew.

                “No. You told me I made my choice.” His voice was mocking, and he extended his hands and moved them, mimicking a scale. “Power, not you. My empty heart.” This was one of the meadows by her home. If only she felt better, she could lead him around, show him the birch copse where a hawk nested, and a shady part of the stream where a badger sometimes came in the early morning.

                “You’ll find me.” Belle said, voice wavering. “You’re going to regret sending me like I regretted leaving.” The sun was blinding her; she was tearing up.

                “ _I_ don’t know that. You didn’t return. Do you really think that _I_ would go after someone who doesn’t want me? Even _if_ I did regret it.” He touched his finger to his lip, head cocked, curls swinging, and looked at her as if she were mad for saying such a thing.

                “You’ll come after me,” Belle said, finally sitting up, and bashed her elbow against the cell wall. The vision of grass and light was gone with the sensation, and she was shivering in her dim prison, wet from sweat instead of grass. A few tears trickled down her face.

                “There won’t be anything to find,” he said, still cloaked in sunlight and dewdamp, then turned on his heel and walked through the wall. Belle lurched to her feet, head spinning.

                “Rumpelstiltskin!” she screamed. There was some bread and cheese and an apple on a tray by the door—her last meal; they just appeared. “You’re wrong!” She sank back down to the floor, too weak to stand. “I’ll be here.” She picked up the apple and bit into it. She would eat, and pace her little cell, for as long as she had to.

                “I’m never going to stop fighting for you,” she whispered, and made herself swallow the bite. The apple tasted sweet and salty. “I promised forever.”


	2. That A Ghost Should Be So Practical

The two torches flickering at the end of the passageway were going to drive him mad. Guards came by to replace them every day, like clockwork. Stiff, uniformed and mailed men, whose fear rolled off their bodies almost visibly. Not much got through the tooth-like bars of his cell, but scent certainly did. He called to them, shrieked and gibbered nonsense. Sometimes they jumped and brandished spears, chiding him, reminding themselves that he was powerless here. It didn’t make him feel any better, but it didn’t hurt, and it was something to do.  
Regina must have the curse by now; all she had to do was enact it. Likely, in all her ignorance about the nature of magic, she hadn’t quite figured out just how high the price would be. She had made her threat: the new king and queen had come to him quite a while ago, begging for help.   
All his pieces were in play. He was playing both sides of the board, now, and he could see the course of the game, every few moves clear and distinct, the rest blurred, lost to his sight. Was his cell interfering with his visions, or had they always been so sporadic? Here, his curse pressed in around him, the power of the Dark One crammed into a single cell. It crawled over him like ants, sometimes, and the two torches, which were scarcely enough to light the dungeon, occasionally burned his eyes, glowing like fireworks.  
The trick was to concentrate on the game: the longest, most important game he had ever played. The black queen was getting ready to make her final move. White had its counter, after a fashion—presuming all went as planned. It would come twenty-eight years from now, but after the centuries he had been waiting, it scarcely mattered. The final sacrifice had to be made: black’s bishop for white’s queen. One more move, and there was a fifty-fifty chance (he guessed) that he wouldn’t be aware of what was happening. The board was arranged, and now…just more waiting.  
His magic was not suited to being confined, and it drove inward when it could not push outward. Dark figures stalked around the inside of his cell, and in the corridor. That was when he knew he had lost his mind. The magic might conjure up shades inside, but it couldn’t go outside. He found he didn’t really care. He was never alone anymore: sometimes Milah glared and hissed at him, no doubt insulting him under her breath. Still, her presence made him uneasy, because he had enough reason left to realize she was the least his mind could inflict on him.  
After a little while, he forgot that the ghosts weren’t real. Milah’s ghost snarled at him, reminding him that he was a coward, like his father before him.  
“You’ve cursed me and our son to live with this, Rumpelstiltskin!” she shouted. His knee was burning. “I wish you had died in the war, and done us all a favor.”  
“I did it for you and Bae!” he protested. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for him.” Milah only snorted and disappeared, leaving him crouched on the floor of the cell, confused about whether he was Rumpelstiltskin the spinner or the Dark One.  
Bae never came and talked to him, and some distant part of his mind regretted that. The logical part said, no ghost because he’s alive, and the maddened part said, he could be dead in another world, and with that his patience, which he had thought boundless, flaked away like crumbling mica: in a shattering, glittering rush. Bae could be dying, in his magicless world. Every second counted, every breath.  
“Just do it!” he howled, and the guards jumped and turned to look at him, gripping the bars of the cell and shaking. What was she waiting for? The king and queen to capture her again? “Finish it!”  
“Rumpelstiltskin!” a voice berated him. He turned to see another ghost standing in his cell: his latest great mistake. Belle was wearing the gold dress he had first seen her in, but a smear of half-dried blood is painted down the side of her face, her chestnut hair clumped with it, making an ugly tangle. The kind of wound that would kill someone who jumped from a great height. He looks away from her, grinding his teeth, wishing Milah and her scorn back here to torment him instead. “You’re almost out of chances!” Her voice is just as he remembers; whether he remembers correctly or not is a different matter.  
“Belle,” he chokes, sinking back to the floor, fisting his hands in his hair. He can smell her, too: like roses and blood.  
“You know it’s your fault. You caused—this,” she touched the bloody streak on her face. Rumpelstiltskin swallowed, choking back tears.  
“I need my power,” he quavered. “Belle, I’m so, so sorry, but I need the power to find my son.” Belle looked at him with sad eyes: the blue of them looked like wet stones in a river. He wondered if she had done it in a moment of grief or defiance or pain. It didn’t matter: she was still dead.  
“You never told me,” she reminded him. She wasn’t angry. He wondered why: she had been angry when she left. “I only meant to help you.” He laughed, a bitter, barking laugh, losing for a second his mad titter.  
“You meant? Intent is meaningless.” He spat the word out, angry with himself, with her, with the world.  
“Well, if you want your scheme now to bear fruit, then focus on it. Be ready. If your son means so much to you, then you shouldn’t waste your time losing your mind here.” She was sweet and sensible, even in death. She was right. There was some part of him that knew that all these ghosts were false, but something even deeper knew she was speaking correctly. He had work to do.  
The ghosts were still there, Milah and Belle and others, blurrier and with less to say, but he pushed them to the edge of his awareness, until his world narrowed to the chessboard and the cell, the two torches the edge of reality, the smell of blood and roses—he had to acknowledge something—the edge of madness.


End file.
